Down and Out
by sassqueenclara
Summary: Twelve/Clara Sugar Daddy AU. Clara Oswald suddenly finds herself in a dire financial situation and needs a way out pretty quickly. John Smith is looking for someone to travel the world with, and share with them the beauty of planet Earth. They can come to an agreement, right? Queerplatonic/Ambiguous relationship.


She was fucked.

Utterly, royally fucked.

Clara stared at the numbers on her laptop screen and groaned in protest. She was at the limit of her overdraft in her bank account. She still had a month of university left and a week's worth of food. There was no way she'd have enough for the next few weeks—she'd been so careful, as well...

Her student loan hadn't been enough to cover her rent and food costs - nobody's was. The UK government were insane to think that a loan of two thousand pounds a year for the next three years was going cover Clara's living costs. At least she didn't have to pay for WiFi at the moment, living in student halls and all. Or water and gas. Come to think of it... How _had_ she managed to throw away all that money?

Her rent was about one hundred and fifty a week, she had a weekend job at a book store and she meticulously checked her finances once a week. Then Clara remembered that she'd had to leave her job because of the upcoming exams and there was little time as it was for her to revise everything, and then there was the Night Out.

Oh yes, it had to be capitalised.

So, it had all started off when Clara and Amy thought it might be a good idea to go to 'Spoons on a Friday night before the first exams kicked off on the following Monday. It was meant to be a celebratory _"we're nearly done with uni!"_ night out with cheap food and cheap drinks. They had picked up Rory and Danny along the way, but when getting to 'Spoons it was hastily decided that Nando's would be a far better option.

They trotted off further up the main high street in order to find the Nando's – for some reason, it was pretty damn empty for a Friday night. Then again, the pubs, bars, and clubs were more likely to be filled with people at seven in the evening. Yes, that early. The world worked in strange ways when it came to a Friday night. Although the near empty Nando's had worked in their favour – they could laugh as loud as they pleased while trying the peri peri chicken, going red in the face from the heat of it, and then downing as much water as they possibly could before moving onto the bottomless frozen yogurt for dessert. The flavour of the night was vanilla. That was rather soothing on the tongue after such spicy chicken.

A drink or two had been consumed at that establishment, and by eight thirty they decided it was high time to move onto the next. Which happened to be a gay bar. A pub, more accurately, but everyone simply referred to it as a "gay bar." It was just a regular pub, but it proudly had the rainbow flag on the outside of it. These sorts of places were always dotted about London; it was hard not to walk into a "gay bar." Naturally, Jack, John, and Ianto were to be found there, hiding in the back corner and downing pints and whisky like there was no tomorrow.

They each took turns buying rounds. Clara found herself giggling like a thirteen year old school girl every time Jack made a flirtatious remark towards her. He kept buying her drinks, so she promised that the next place they went to she would buy him some too.

Thus began the pub crawl.

The rounds had stopped coming in turn and soon they were all buying their own drinks – some of them more than others. They met Rose, Martha and Donna along the way, and soon enough they were a merry gang traipsing the streets of London.

Next up was the club. Nobody could remember which one because they were all at the point of being borderline drunk (how the _hell_ did they even get in? Who knows!) but all Clara remembers from then is buying shot after shot after shot. That, and the fact that she woke up naked in bed the next afternoon with Danny Pink fast asleep to her left, and a pile of receipts to her right.

Clara had managed to use up her last three hundred pounds on drinks alone. It didn't really register with her because she spent the Saturday trying to get over her monster hangover, but the Sunday was when she found herself realising that that last three hundred pounds had been her overdraft and not actual money that was hers.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid..." Clara was lightly and repeatedly hitting her head on the desk now. After a few minutes or so, she stopped. Sitting up straight again, the tiny nineteen year old inhaled slowly and exhaled at the same rate, expelling all her frustration and anger and irrational thoughts with that breath. Control. She simply needed a bit of control back in her life.

A sudden knock on her bedroom door brought her out of that and she nearly screamed. She went to answer and found curly haired River Song standing on the other side of it. River was in her third year of Archaeology, and Clara genuinely had a bit of a thing for the older girl. River hadn't picked up on it and had a soft spot for Clara anyway, so it worked in the younger girl's favour, really. She got hugs and platonic kisses from River all the time.

"You've not been out of your room for two days – everything alright, sweetie?" River asked Clara as she waltzed into her room and flopped down onto the bed. Things were like that in their halls of residence.

Clara sighed, glum, and went to sit back at her desk. She swivelled round in her chair for a few moments, debating on whether to tell River the truth or not. Actually, she and River were pretty close anyway. Might as well be the truth.

"Well… I may have blown my last three hundred pounds on drinks on Friday night."

River's mouth dropped open. "You? You blew your all that cash on _booze_ in just one night?! I suddenly wish I could have been there to witness you drunk out of your mind."

Clara shot her a look. "I'm sure Jack can tell you all about that. Also I slept with Danny _again_."

"That explains why I saw him doing the walk of shame out of the flat yesterday morning," she mused. "He's not Jack's type, Amy and Rory are far too into each other, and Osgood isn't the type to go out and get drunk anyway..."

Halls of residence at their university had six of them living together in one flat. Here, it was just Clara, River, Jack, Amy, Rory, and Osgood. It was a nice bunch, really, and they all hoped to moved into a house together next year. Even though River was a third year, she'd opted to stay at halls for the first few years because of how intense Archaeology was, but she knew that by fourth year it would be settling down a bit.

"River, I don't know what I'm going to do! I told dad I was gonna be fine and I swore to myself I wouldn't ask him for money _or_ let myself get into a bloody mess like this!" Clara cried out and threw her arms in the air before having them coming to rest on her desk with her head on top of them.

"Just take out a loan from the bank and pay it back slowly over the course of the next year… and just get that job back at the book shop after exams, yeah?" River told her gently. She came over and perched herself on Clara's desk in the space that was available, and patted the girl's head. She'd never seen Clara so frustrated with herself before, and it was quite upsetting, really.

"I can't take out a loan, they probably won't let me and I don't want to be in even more debt along with my student loan," Clara mumbled.

"Yeah, that's a point..." River was now beginning to rack her brains. She knew that Clara needed a very quick and easy solution to get out of her money problems for the rest of the term and the summer, but it was hard to think of something that was _legal_.

Then it came to her all of a sudden.

River had read a few articles about it over the past couple of years at university, but she wondered if she might have to take that measure herself. It was a good last resort option, or a back up option if one was uncomfortable taking out loans on top of loans. She'd been lucky enough to not _have_ to go with the option (even though it was rather appealing to her, but she was that kind of girl) and now she was very happy to share it with Clara.

"Get a sugar daddy," was all she said, stopping in the patting of Clara's head. The brunette woman sat up straight instantly, giving River a strange look. "I've read about it, and you'd be surprised at how many uni students have them to help with money troubles! Especially if their loan and job _really_ doesn't cover rent and food."

"But… wouldn't I have to have sex with them?"

River shook her head. "That's not a part of it, unless _you_ want to. Unless you discuss it with them, of course. But you really don't have to have sex with them. You'll have to meet up with them a few times a month for dinner and whatnot, but other than that… you get a lot of money."

She could tell that Clara was mulling it over in her head for a bit; thinking about the good and bad sides of getting a sugar daddy – or sugar mummy – and whether it would really be worth it in the long run.

"I wouldn't want people finding out," Clara finally said. River just laughed.

"It can be our little secret, sweetie." She tossed the girl a wink and that, and Clara's cheeks went a little pink. "Look, I'll send you a link to the really good one that I found a while back and you can go from there, yeah?"

"This is so weird. It feels like charity."

"Clara, they have money to throw away. It's hardly charity. They get to throw some of their large amounts of disposable income at you, and in return you give them a bit of company and intelligent conversation. Also it helps a lot if you're pretty. Think you can do that?"

Clara nodded, albeit a little nervously. "Yeah. I think I can do that."

"Good. Have fun!"

River hopped off the desk and sauntered from Clara's room, slamming the door in the process. About three minutes later, Clara's phone buzzed and she saw that she had a Facebook message from River with the link to the website.

She logged back into her laptop and opened the link on Facebook from there. After trawling through the Terms and Conditions, the Frequently Asked Questions, and also debated it further with herself, Clara finally signed up.

"This is weird, this is _so, so weird..._ " she kept on muttering to herself the more time she spent on the website, trying to build up a profile and then find a good match. As soon as her profile was completed, Clara leaned back in her chair.

She was a sugar baby now.

That wasn't something she'd ever expected to happen in her life. She was literally waiting for someone to approach her now, although she suspected she'd have to do a bit of digging around too. Clara had specified she didn't want any romantic or sexual relationship, but that she was willing to spend time with whoever it was that wanted to spend time with her as well, really.

Clara was pretty – yeah, her face was a bit wide but her eyes were lovely and brown and round and her nose was absolutely adorable. She was an English Literature student, so she was well read and could hold intelligent conversation… she also wanted to travel, so she could talk about the places where she wanted to go.

Yeah… she had a lot of ground to cover, actually.

She had a bit of a hunt around on the site, and nobody was taking her fancy, so far. That was a bit annoying. She was getting a bit desperate. She wanted to find someone this afternoon and then do some last minute revision before her exams tomorrow – she had done all of her revision before The Night Out, but this was just a last minute check. She knew everything there was to know about her texts, but there was no harm in doing a brief once over.

Then she got a message.

That was quick.

It was from a man named John Smith. She had a poke around at his profile before actually replying to his message, and was surprised to find he was a middle aged man, with greying hair and the most terrifying eyebrows she had ever seen. Oh, and he was Scottish too. If Amy knew about this, she would most _definitely_ approve.

Clara took a deep breath and finally opened the message.

 _Hello, I'm a bit new to this but I'm looking for someone to travel with…_

Okay, good start. Sounds promising. She carried on reading.

 _It's probably weird because you're quite baby-faced-_

She quirked an eyebrow at that. Baby-faced? Okay, this guy clearly had no social etiquette whatsoever, but that wasn't exactly much of a problem with her. Jack could be a walking innuendo when it suited him. Which was about seventy five percent of the time.

 _-and I don't want to come off as creepy, but you seem like you could use some help._

Well, he certainly got one thing right. Was it that fact she had "university student" on her profile that blared out that she needed some form of financial aid? It probably was.

 _I think we could come to some sort of agreement. Right?_

Right. Clara sat in thought for a moment. This John Smith – he seemed alright enough, and he was being very honest with her in his message. What harm could it do to say… meet for a coffee? He seemed lonely, if he was looking for someone to go on travels with. He must have been. Otherwise he wouldn't have said that, would he? Would he lie about his motives? No, these sites were pretty safe (according to River anyway), so Clara could rule out him being a liar.

So she typed out a response.

 _Hi, I think I might be the person you're looking for. I'm new to this as well, so don't worry._

She sent it, and waited. A few minutes later, she got one back.

 _Good. Good… you're in London, right? I'm currently living in the area, and if you want to get coffee and talk about this a bit more, I'd prefer it. Computers make me feel awkward. Computers make THIS even more awkward._

Clara couldn't help but laugh at that. He had a point – using a computer for this really did make it all the more awkward.

 _How's Monday afternoon? Could use some caffeine after my exam…_

Was the line about the exam too much?

 _Monday afternoon is good. There's a coffee shop just off of Oxford Street called Kaffeine. I'll be there from two o'clock onwards. Get there whenever you can._

Apparently not.

Well… now it was time to also prepare for meeting John Smith. This was going to be interesting, that was for sure, and she couldn't wait to tell River.

* * *

 **Hello all!**

 **This is the start of a 5 chapter fanfiction that I aim to update every other week. The chapters will be a little bit longer than this, but I couldn't drag out the exposition. Either way, I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of this Twelveclara AU. I'm really enjoying writing this, so yeah, I hope I'm definitely delivering to your expectations.**

 **I will point out now, however, that the John/Clara relationship can be taken as either platonic or romantic. I really don't mind which way you decide to ship it - just ship it! I personally ship it more platonically, but I'm going to write this so I can appeal to whatever takes the general Twelveclara audience fancy, so everyone is happy.**

 **Feedback is always appreciated!**

 **-SQC**


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